The Struggle When Your Partner is Monogamous

The poly/monogamous divide feels wider than ever in our marriage.

One of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself is to finally (and unapologetically) figure out who you are. Sure, maybe it takes six years of being in a relationship, and then four more years of marriage to someone to come to the realization. But it is better to show up late to the party than to never come at all.

When potential partners ask me when I became poly, I kind of scoff. I mean, does one “become poly”? I feel like I have always been poly. Interestingly, my gay brother is also poly, although in the gay community the idea of non-monogamy is much more widely accepted as a social norm.

Looking back, I could never be monogamous with any of my boyfriends pre-marriage. I tried to hold it together when I was first dating my husband, going six years without straying from him. I figured that all that longing to be with more than one person I felt in the past would just fade away once I had found “the one.” But after the wedding and subsequent years of marriage, although I was in martial bliss, I still felt that something was missing.

I felt like the only way that I could be my most authentic self and maintain my relationship with him was to develop another romantic relationship. My desire to meet someone else with whom I could invest emotional and sexual energy became something that I knew I needed to open up with him about. It wasn’t easy to think about how to discuss this — the person he married was one woman and here I was trying to tell him I was someone else.

When I asked him if we could open up our marriage, he told me that he didn’t understand my need to find another partner. He is very traditional in his views on relationships and marriage and despite trying to explain my viewpoints on why I felt I needed to engage in multiple deep and meaningful romantic connections with more than one person, he struggled to understand that need as it was so different from his own.

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